Acute leukemias are clonal expansions of uncommitted or partially committed haematopoietic precursor cells. Abnormalities in the control of programmed cell death (apoptosis) play important role in leukemogenesis. Survivin is a member of inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAP) family. It prevents apoptosis by blocking caspase activity. Dramatic overexpression of survivin was demonstrated in solid tumours of pancreas, oesophagus, lung as well as in leukemias and lymphomas. Cyclins, which are positive agents of cell cycle, may be expressed abnormally at the same time, cyclin E2 was found out to be the potential marker of tumors since it presented a positive expression in the cell lines of solid tumors and a negative expression in proliferating normal cells, The expression of cyclin E2 gene in acute leukemia was also detected. The present study assessed survivin as well as cyclin E2 genes expression in acute leukemia patients using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. This study included 60 de novo acute leukemia patients as well as 40 age and sex matched normal healthy subjects as a control group. Our study revealed; survivin and cyclin E2 genes expression was significantly higher in the studied leukemic patients compared with the control subjects, both genes are associated with increased risk of development of acute leukemia and treatment failure. Moreover, when combining the 2 genes expression a significant elevation of the risk of acute leukemia and treatment failure was found. So survivin and cyclin E2 genes expression may have clinical relevance and important role as risk factors in the development of acute leukemia. Also, they may be useful as predictive markers for treatment outcome in acute leukemia patients.